Oil and gas industry announcements: 8 January 2015

CPI

Compressor Products International has announced that Bill Favenesi has been promoted to President. Favenesi brings over 20 years of engineering industry experience to the company. He served as VP for Global Commercial Development at CPI for the past 14 months, and has been with EnPro industries, Inc. for nearly 10 years.

EPA

The US EPA and Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation are mobilised to remove 4400 gal. of low sulfur diesel from a creek that flows into the Tiekel River after an oil tanker truck slid off the Richardson Highway 48 miles northeast of Valdez, Alaska on December 9 2014 and spilled the fuel it was transporting. The fuel went into a creek that flows into the Tiekel River, which in turn flows into the world renowned Copper River. The rivers provide habitat for several salmon and trout species. EPA is working with ADEC under Unified Command to complete the cleanup.

Alaska Petroleum Distributing, Inc., the owner and operator of the truck, mobilised a crew and begun cleanup of the spill under the supervision of ADEC. By December 22 2015, the company had used most of its US$1 million insurance coverage and claimed it was financially unable to continue cleanup. The company failed to comply with an EPA order to complete the work, at which point EPA began mobilising cleanup crews.

EPW

US Senator Jim Inhofe has been given unanimous support from his colleagues on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee to become chairman for the 114th Congress. In conjunction, Inhofe announced the top priorities for the EPW Committee as well as announced staff hires to serve the EPW majority.

Excelerate Energy

Excelerate Energy LP has completed its 700th commercial ship to ship (STS) transfer of LNG in Escobar, Argentina at the GNL Escobar LNG import facility. Using Excelerate Energy’s regasification vessel, EXEMPLAR and the conventional LNG carrier CADIZ KNUTSEN, 73 778 m3 of LNG were transferred using the double banked LNG transfer system. Excelerate has successfully transferred over 74 million ft3 using its STS protocol, of the 700 operations, 602 have been with third party vessels.

Excelerate Energy developed and implemented the industry’s first STS transfer system for LNG deliveries to regasification vessels in 2005 in order to optimise the capabilities of regasification vessels and to provide a viable solution for providing a continuous supply of natural gas to market. STS transfers have been commercially accepted and proven in a wide range of environments including open ocean locations and protected bodies of water at a variety of locations between the LNG load ports and the market delivery points.

HDR

HDR continues to expand its service capabilities with the acquisition of Brentwood, Tennessee based Infrastructure Corporation of America (ICA), which specialises in transportation engineering, asset maintenance and management, and the asset purchase of MEI, LLC, a LNG consulting firm based in Pooler, Georgia. ICA will do business as HDR|ICA, and MEI will operate as HDR|MEI. Financial terms have not been disclosed.